


Ship Slowly Sinking

by midnightflame



Series: Homecoming [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Blood, Shiro flirts with the dark side, This may count as a lover's quarrel, both he and Keith hate it, this is how I bring you back to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:05:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9328145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Like a guiding star in the night sky, Keith always manages to bring Shiro back home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this has been a lot of Voltron this weekend. . .not that that is all bad really. As a reminder, this series is not being written in chronological order, but maybe some of the themes are coming together a bit more. Or maybe there's more questions - hopefully the last few pieces will flesh things out a bit more, but for now, here's the next piece! Enjoy!

It’s not that he had wanted to scream (in fact, the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind), but it doesn’t change the position he is in, with his words locked behind a hand clamped far too tightly over his mouth, his right arm twisted up and back behind him, his body pressed against the familiar unknown. 

Achingly, painfully familiar.

Keith exhales slowly through his nose and scans the room he had been dragged into just moments before. Shadows are clawing up the walls, save for the small sliver of purple light tracking along the floor. It’s spacious, with a high vaulting ceiling, and completely empty. A perfect square box of a room, with two potential exits – the one he had just been pulled through and another at the farthest end sitting just opposite. 

Breath skirts along the edge of his ear as the man behind him lowers his head. Harsh, quick little puffs of air warming skin and stirring memories they had no right to be touching. He closes his eyes briefly, inhaling deeply, and behind him the breathing begins to slow to something less panicked in its construction. 

The hand over his mouth starts to slip with all the tentative progression of a man uncertain of himself. Millimeters at first, bit by bit, until the air hits cold against too-warm skin and Keith can finally lick at his lips. They taste of salt and iron, all of the things ground into a life and pulled out of it ruthlessly again in forms new and sharp and almost always scarring.

“Shiro. . .?” Keith murmurs, tilting his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the man behind him. 

His head is bowed, the white of his hair tickling against Keith’s cheek, and his eyes are screwed shut, but whether it’s to block out the sights before him or those from within, Keith doesn’t rightly know. He _wants_ to know - desperately, fiercely – but everything scrawled across Shiro’s face in this moment is spun from abject agony and the thing Keith wants most in this one moment is to rid him of its very source. 

Something he knows he cannot do alone, and it’s that single thought that puts the crack right into his heart. 

“Shiro. . .” he whispers again, in voice unsteady, seeking some sort of response.

It comes seconds later, just as Keith is lifting his free arm to put fingertips to skin, through gritted teeth with eyes still ground tightly shut and a rough shove out towards the center of the room.

“Get away! Just. . .don’t touch me!” A pause, as the breath comes hard and fast from Shiro once more. His hands are on his head, pressing against each side; he doubles over soon after with a small wretched cry. Everything stills save for the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the silence broken only by his soft pants. And then he’s looking up, apologies written in his eyes, as he sets his sight on Keith. “Get out of here now!”

Keith can only blink, his thoughts rear-ending into one another until they are simply a massive pile-up of confusion. The corner of his mouth twists, lips parting though nothing comes out. Not at first. Because it’s so damn hard to pull his gaze away from Shiro in this moment, barely standing with his right palm flat against the wall, with a look on his face that says this moment, right here and now, is everywhere he wants to be and yet is an absolute hell. 

It’s a look Keith can understand far too well. He has the last few days to thank for that. 

With a shake of his head, Keith starts towards Shiro. His thoughts reorganize, pulled back into working motion by that look and all it implores. “I didn’t come here to give up on you. . .”

He runs his fingers along Shiro’s jaw, then carefully cups his face, encouraging him to stand fully once more. 

“. . .So, you don’t get to go giving up either.”

Shiro’s mouth curves into a smile, worn and unsure. He exhales roughly, the faint traces of bitter laughter echoing in the sound. “You would tell me that.”

“But are you going to listen?”

Shiro shuts his eyes once more, letting his head press heavily against Keith’s left palm. “You have to get out of here. I’m not. . .” His jaw clenches, teeth grinding. “It’s not out of my system. . .not all of it. . .”

“What are you. . .?”

“Please, Keith!”

Another heavy exhale. Keith can feel Shiro’s hands gliding up his sides, a tremor cascading down his arms as they drift slowly upward.

“Go. . .now!”

“I’m not –“

But it’s far too late, just like it had been earlier when he had barely caught the shadow spilling onto the floor from just around the corner, just before a hand had closed in around his mouth, around his waist. Just as he had failed to recognize the strange, pressing silence that proceeded it.  


That same silence sits around him now, as heavy and suffocating as the hand around his throat. Only that’s not what hurts.

Just as the world starts to go dark, Keith finds himself sliding across the floor. He’s coughing, throat feeling sand-blasted and his skin burning from the edge of his jaw right down to his collarbone. He gasps, desperate for air, his vision blurring and giving the world an odd desert-haze everywhere he tries to look. Sound ricochets off the walls around him, settling into one steady static-crackling hum. 

As he rolls himself onto his back, a shadow looms dark and imposing above him. His tongue flicks out over his lips, now wet with a sharp metallic gloss. Something reminds him of the hit he had taken two days ago.

Something else tells him that’s the least of his worries. 

Keith shuts his eyes, a raspy exhale accompanying the act. He wants to look above him, even as he already knows what will be waiting for him. It’s only when Shiro settles himself over his body, boots planted firm on each side, that Keith finally takes in the sight above. 

This isn’t the man he has known, though he is undeniably Shiro. It’s all in the eyes, Keith thinks. That strange feral look, dangerous and promising the best of a world better left lost. It’s not insanity, not at all. But something altogether inhuman, bright with predatory delight. And sometimes. . .sometimes it comes to rest in the curve of Shiro’s mouth, this wide swath of a smile cut over Shiro’s face that is terribly, beautifully vicious.

Keith wants to knock it clean off of him. It’s a thought that leaves him smiling grimly in return. 

“I really. . .fucking hate. . .that witch. . .” he mumbles as Shiro sinks to a low squat over him. 

His gaze never once leaves Shiro’s face, not even as a hand fists itself around the collar of his jacket, not as he watches the other one curl in kind, locking as Shiro pulls his arm back, not as Keith knows where this is going because he has been here once before (his body still remembers the feeling, still aches with complaints).

Not even as he reaches up, both hands digging into Shiro’s shirt, and pulls himself forward, his forehead battering against Shiro’s with a sharp and all too clear _crack!_. It leaves him with a mind-splintering pain that has curses jumping from bloodied lips and his thoughts rattling with all the clamorous discord cacophony can conjure up. 

Keith swears he won’t ever admit to this being one of his finer battle plans, but it had gotten the job done. Now, just off to the side, with his right leg still draped over Keith’s body, Shiro is shaking his head, his eyes shut once more, a hand pressed hard to his forehead. Lines, wrought by pain and confusion, dig into his brow, leaving the impression of someone far too human to be called anything else, and it has Keith’s heart stutter-stepping in relief. A laugh slips over his lips, quiet and just a bit rattled.

“I told you to get away. . .” 

Shiro’s voice is shaking, pained in all the ways Keith knew it would be, those ways that always seem to hurt Shiro the most. 

“And I told you I came here for you.”

His eyes meet Shiro’s, and for all the misery locked within his gaze, Keith can see so much more beyond it, like the fragile hope that flutters in every storm. Even if Shiro can’t see it himself. He reaches over and runs his fingers along Shiro’s jaw, refusing to depart even as he flinches under the touch. Steadfast and unrepentant. And as the guilt hits hard and tells Shiro there is nothing here that he deserves, Keith presses his palm flat against his cheek and leans over, silent as all the ghosts Shiro battles, and kisses him. 

It tastes like blood and sweat, the fine mixings of regret, and as Shiro relents, sighing heavily against his lips, Keith finally lets his thoughts sink into silence. A respite, needed for however temporary it would be. 

Shiro brings his right arm around Keith’s shoulder, hand settling against the back of his head. Lips parting, he presses his forehead to Keith’s and shuts his eyes, this time without the furrowed brow or contorted pull over his mouth, those things that forever whispered, _nothing is okay_. 

“I can’t promise you. . .” 

“You don’t have to,” Keith murmurs, running his hand up the back of Shiro’s neck. “That’s why I’m here.”

A smile tugs on Shiro’s lips, hesitant but hopeful. “You are. . .you always have been.”

“You know, I thought I was going to have to punch you at least a couple of times before we got to this point.”

“That much, huh?” Shiro muses, his words light as spring rain against Keith’s lips. 

A kiss, taken for renewal, a little less blood this time and a little more Shiro. “I can still hit you if you need me to.”

“How about getting out of here instead?”


End file.
